The urbane, intellectual figure of Michael Ignatieff seems an unlikely candidate to play the role of bogeyman in the eyes of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s populist prime minister, as he strives to turn his country into an “illiberal state”.

Yet it was on him that Orbán’s official spokesman focused while scrambling to explain recent mass protests supporting Budapest’s Central European University (CEU) – a small elite institution of higher learning of which Ignatieff is rector, and which could, theoretically, be forced to close because of a new higher education law.

Turkey votes today on whether to cement the power of a man revered by many, reviled and feared by many others

The boulevards of Istanbul are lined with posters backing both sides in today’s knife-edge referendum on constitutional reform. Both camps – “evet” (yes in Turkish) and “hayır” (no) – are convinced they hold the key to resolving the republic’s many troubles.

But one image dominates the debate. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s face is ubiquitous. In one poster, his steady gaze is accompanied by the caption: “For security, for stability.”

Microwave Cooking: The Microwave Cook Book Collection, by Rodney Cannon, is free in the Kindle store and from Barnes & Noble, Google, iTunes and Kobo, courtesy of publisher Macmillan [Pronoun]. In a couple of the stores, it appears that the author has uploaded the edition that is available, rather than the publisher Macmillan, but the one at Amazon and Kobo are the publisher editions. From the description, this title includes several smaller pamphlet size books that the author has also previously self-published, so the Macmillan edition may filter it’s way into the other stores at some point. Note that at B&N, this volume isn’t available, but Cooking With Ketchup, 30 Go To Recipes ($0.99 Kindle) is free there, instead; it is also free from Kobo.

Book DescriptionYou ever look at your microwave oven and wonder if it is good for more than making popcorn and TV dinners? Wonder no more. You can prepare an amazing meal with this wonderful device. Meals that will be quick and easy. You can cook things that you were told are impossible for a microwave like cookies, cakes, stir fry, tacos, Risotto and even crispy bacon. This two volume set will teach you all the basics. This is more than a recipe book, this is a cookbook.

Volume One: Cooking with Mic Cooking With Mic is an easy to follow microwave cook book that is not only filled will easy to follow recipes but tons of humor. Written by a cook who believes that laughter is can get your though any recipe. In this cook book you will learn how to make everything from steak to risotto, to french toast to chocolate cake from scratch in a microwave oven.

Volume Two:Desserts with Mic You can cook anything from Cheesecake to chocolate cookies, Fudge, truffles and Turkish Delight in your microwave oven.. This book with teach you how to make some of the most popular and delicious desserts with your microwave.

The Trump Tax Marches have taken over social media all day long today, with major noise on Twitter, specifically, as Trump comes under fire for having never released his tax returns. (He’s variously claimed that he’s under audit, and then that nobody would care about it if he released them, anyways.)

But thousands of people — including celebs — are fed up with The Donald and letting it show on the streets!!

Ch-ch-check out some of the protest highlights from celebs like Debra Messing and Sarah Silverman, plus some of the best signs and the other notable moments (below)!!!

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — We’ve been waiting a long time to say this… April the giraffe has finally given birth!

Before an online audience of more than a million viewers, April the giraffe gave birth to a male calf Saturday at a New York zoo, ending weeks of proverbial pacing by animal lovers in a virtual worldwide waiting room.

The 15-year-old giraffe delivered her calf shortly before 10 a.m. EDT in an enclosed pen at the zoo in Harpursville, a rural upstate village about 130 miles northwest of New York City. The mama giraffe tenderly licked her calf, which began to slowly pick its head up from the floor of the pen. About 45 minutes after it was born, the calf stood on its wobbly legs for the first time while mom helped keep her baby steady.

He began nursing not long after.

At least 1.2 million people watched the Adventure Park’s YouTube streaming of the event . A logo on the feed quickly changed from ToysRUs to BabiesRUs following the birth.

Animal Adventure Park owner Jordan Patch said that both mom and calf are doing fine.

Patch said the calf’s entrance into the world “was unnerving to even those of us who have witnessed animal births previously.”
“Giraffes give birth standing up, which means when the calf is ready to be born, it exits its mother hooves first from six feet off the floor, making for a very exciting event,” Patch said in a news release.

Besides the cuteness factor, April’s new baby is important for animal conservation. The giraffe population has declined by 40 percent in the last three decades, making the species vulnerable to extinction.

“Any time there is a species that is either vulnerable or on the verge of extinction and they have that baby it is very important to that conservation,” Cassy Holets, a giraffe keeper, said.

While mom and the baby spent their first day bonding, human families flocked to the Turtleback Zoo in West Orange to celebrate, CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported.

“We don’t go to the zoo a lot I don’t get to see that kinda stuff a lot so it was fun to see it on Facebook it was easy,” Kayla Westergaard, of Montville, said.

John Donnelly, 7, has been following the pregnancy with his family and insisted that they all go to the zoo together.

This is April’s fourth calf, but Animal Adventure Park’s first giraffe calf. The proud papa, a 5-year-old giraffe named Oliver, watched from an adjacent pen. This is his first offspring.

The privately owned zoo began livestreaming from April’s enclosure in February. People around the world have been tuning in daily. The animal even got her own text alerts and merchandise through the upstate New York zoo’s website.

April also has her own website and even an apparel line. A GoFundMe fundraiser page that initially set a goal of $50,000 sat at more than $125,000 on Saturday morning. The money will be used for the care of the animals.

A contest will be held to decide on a name for the calf.

The park’s livestream was briefly interrupted in February when YouTube pulled the feed after someone reported the images contained explicit material and nudity. Jordan Patch, owner of the Animal Adventure Park, blamed “a handful of extremists and animal rights activists” for the interruption.

The wait for the giraffe became an anxiety-ridden experience for some. A Farmington, New Hampshire, songwriter even posted a music video on YouTube called, “I’m Going Crazy Waiting (For A Giraffe).”

Animal Adventure park is currently closed to the public and will open in mid-May. Whatever’s in store for this little giraffe, the cald already has one big accomplishment — bringing animal lovers around the world together in the miracle of life.

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The complete story of the sinking of the Titanic, told by Walter Lord in two acclaimed and riveting chronicles of the ship’s doomed maiden voyage

In just two hours and forty minutes, 1,500 souls were lost at sea when the RMS Titanic succumbed to the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Based on interviews with sixty-three survivors, A Night to Remember tells the story of that fateful night, offering a meticulous and engrossing look at one of the twentieth century’s most infamous disasters.

In The Night Lives On, Lord revisits the unsinkable ship, diving into the multitude of theories—both factual and fanciful—about the Titanic’s last hours. Was the ship really christened before setting sail on its maiden voyage? How did its wireless operators fail so badly, and why did the nearby Californian, just ten miles away when the Titanic struck the iceberg, not come to the rescue?

Together for the first time, Lord’s classic bestseller A Night to Remember and his subsequent study The Night Lives On offer remarkable insight into the maritime catastrophe that continues to fascinate and horrify a full century later.

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When a ten-year-old girl’s mutilated body is found in a public park in Paris, chief of police Nico Sirsky takes action. But his elite team of homicide detectives isn’t on the case for even twenty-four hours before a second child is found murdered and left to rot inside a middle-school classroom. With the City of Light on edge awaiting another gruesome discovery, the clock starts ticking for Sirsky to catch the elusive killer who calls himself the gamemaster.

As the pressure mounts, Sirsky is also confronted with a conundrum in his personal life: his girlfriend is inexplicably pulling away from him. But he must once again put his own problems aside when the investigation turns up nothing but taunts from the killer. It will take an entire team of police psychologists, forensic specialists, and criminal investigators to uncover the truth hidden in a web of murder more tangled than any of them could have imagined.

Already a #1 bestseller in the UK, The Return is a captivating new novel of family, love, and betrayal set against a backdrop of civil war, flamenco, and fiery Spanish passion. The author of the beloved international bestseller The Island, Victoria Hislop now transports the reader to Granada, Spain, in a time of historic turmoil. The Return is a colorful and spellbinding saga of a family inspired by music and dance, only to be torn apart by fragile hearts and divided loyalties during the bitter war that brought the dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco to power.

Please see this post in regards to backing up your books purchased from B&N and this post if you are having problems with the new web design.

All prices current at the time the post is written. Most bargain books remain at their listed price until “midnight” (each store operates on it’s own timezone and schedule), but prices can change at any moment. I have seen prices change within the hour or even minutes after posting.

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